Saturday, November 15, 2008

Nanny knows best

One of the weirdest villains Louise Simonson ever came up with was Nanny. A rather misunderstood scientist who wanted to save mutants by... well... capturing and turning them into child-like robots. Of course, a form of mind control is used to do this... In Uncanny X-men 248, Nanny and her aide Peter (aka Orphan Maker) decided to save the X-men and proceeded to do so. As seen above, they first captured Psylocke. A smart move, because it gave Nanny (and Claremont) no less than two credible ways to mind control folks.

So, here we have a Nanny-controlled Psylocke taking on her teammates Storm and Colossus. Storm is able to break free, but Peter is not so fortunate. Before this scene, both Havok and Dazzler had fallen prey to Nanny... With Rogue and Wolverine gone, this only left Storm free to deal with Nanny and Peter. Which she did, by destroying Nanny's vessel... She seemingly died in that attack and the team buried her remains the following issue.

Of course, this being Uncanny X-men... no one ever really dies. A few years later, Storm turned up alive and welll. But she was mysteriously turned into a preteen. How, you ask? Well, as it turned out: Storm didn't really destroy Nanny's ship... In fact, she was captured and Nanny destroyed a fascimile of her own vessel as a decoy, so she could have her way with Storm. Look at what she did to the windrider: trying to control her mind by reverting her to a young child... But Storm is a powerful person, she fights to protect her own mind. Good for her... Makes me wonder why Claremont ever took a liking to her, though...